


Conundrum

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-01 10:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: It has always been Thor’s destiny to be king.He never thought it might be his destiny to be alone.





	Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NRGburst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NRGburst/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Familiar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13095369) by [NRGburst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NRGburst/pseuds/NRGburst). 



It has always been Thor’s destiny to be king.

He never thought it might be his destiny to be alone.

–

Thor stands at the window and stares out into the stars – a thousand home constellations that he will never see again. And he has known a hundred night skies, but  _ this _ is the sky that he calls home.

_Asgard is not a place, it’s a people._

His father is right, and his father is wrong. By the time Odin passed on that truism to his son, he had lived five thousand years, buried his dark and dangerous daughter, and remade himself and his empire as a legacy for his golden son. In contrast, Thor may make his home wherever he goes; but something in him will always long for Asgard and all it was to him in memory: childhood, innocence, a golden age, his home.

Now he is king of a remnant, fleeing the skies of home, seeking Earth and a land to settle anew.

“ _A moment passes,_  
_Too frail for time’s frame._  
_So all empires fall anon._ ” 

The poetry echoes in the ‘throne room’, but Thor doesn’t turn from the starry sky

“Do you still see?”

Heimdall draws alongside him. “What would you see, my king?”

“Say rather, your friend, Heimdall.”

“A king has no friends.” The guardian smiles faintly, and the gold hilt of his sword rises above his right shoulder and gleams by starlight. “Trusted counsellors, perhaps, but no friends. ‘Tis a lonely road, ruling.”

“My father had my mother by his side.”

“And was fortunate – as he well understood.” Heimdall looks aside, a flash of golden eyes. “Not all power finds an equal to help bear its burdens.”

_We’re so sorry Jane dumped you!_

Thor turns from Heimdall lest Heimdall see too much.

–

He watches the Valkyrie train the Asgardians.

“Muscle memory,” she says clearly. “We’re working towards muscle memory, because when everything comes down to a response, what your body will do is what your body remembers to do. So we’re going to do these exercises over and over and over again. Yes, it’s absolutely as boring as a sun cycle spent staring at the wall – or an hour listening to Loki complain about Thor—”

“All lies,” Loki sings out, still as facile and charming and fascinating as the snake he once deceived Thor with. “I am _never_ boring.”

“--But we’re talking about your life and defending it. We are what’s left of Asgard and _we will survive_.”

Thor wonders about that a little as the Asgardians stretch and bend and move, swinging a crop of sticks and poles in practice. Did the Valkyrie tell herself she was what was left of the Valkyrior – that however drunk and numb she was, that whatever the state of her honor, she’d survived and she owed it to the others to stay alive?

Valkyrie moves among the men and women, correcting poses, giving advice, slapping one man on the shoulder in good companionship when he makes a joke, refocusing another who’s too busy trying to impress one of the young women. She’s involved with these people – they’re her people, even as she’s set apart. One of them and yet not.

Thor appreciates the distinction – doesn’t he live with it himself?

One of the men swipes at something that isn’t there, and frowns. Thor sees the movement, watches the man repeat it, and then realises.

“Spoilsport,” Loki mutters as Thor gently strongarms him out of the room.

“You can find other ways to have your fun,” Thor says. “Korg enjoys your illusions.”

“Korg has all the subtlety of a rock.”

“Which is what he is. Don’t you find it a challenge to entertain him, then?”

“He also lacks a sense of humor.”

“While your illusions have not always been amusing.” Thor pats his brother on the shoulder. “It would appear to be a match made in the stars.”

–

“So, uh, what happened with Dr. Foster?”

Thor is a little surprised by the suddenness of the question – he came to speak with the Big Guy and found Banner sitting on the bed, trying to work out how to operate an information panel, clad in a set of Asgardian robes. He updated the panel to AllSpeech, which would allow Banner to study to his heart’s content, but the other man didn’t immediately start on his research.

“What happened?” He echoes, buying time.

“You’ve been eyeing off the Valkyrie – does she have a name? – for the last couple of weeks. Even the Other Guy noticed. Although that’s probably because he has a crush on her, too.” Banner blinks and stares into space. “That’s kind of weird, really. Like, I can feel how he feels about her, but...it’s not me, either. And there was Loki’s comment the other night.”

_And here I thought you were going to love the Earthling woman forever,_ Loki sneered.

“Jane and I...did not suit.”

Jane’s passion and ferocity for knowledge, her brisk and brilliant delight in the wonders of the universe, and her joy in her work are the representation of everything Thor yearned for as the Prince of Asgard. She forged forward in the belief that there was more to know, more to explore, more to understand. And yet Thor was a distraction from her purpose – someone who had seen the ‘more’ but who couldn’t take her through the universe, someone who had access to the knowledge and understanding she craved but who wasn’t permitted to pass it on to her.

_What you want, Thor, I can’t give you. My first love is my work; yours is Asgard. We’re mutually incompatible in our futures and what we want out of life._

After that, their lovemaking had a bitter edge. And when he invited her to Stark’s party at the Tower and she declined, they both knew they were done.

Jane is the woman for whom he would have defied his place in the universe. She sparked in him a vision, a hope: to look beyond himself, at those beneath and those above, and see the universe with wonder. He likely would have learned such lessons eventually, but her presence was catalyst.

He will always love her, but their lives and purposes are not compatible and never will be.

–

The Valkyrie’s moves in a fight are quite different to any he has known in the Asgardian forces.

Thor has wrestled with monsters and men, has defended against Sif and fallen in defeat, has countered Natasha and found himself pinned. This is a new form of fighting. She uses more than just her weapon and her body – she uses her surroundings and the space that forms the area in which they fight. Everything may be helpful – it is all in how she uses it.

“That was underhanded,” he complains when she locks their swords and uses her lower centre of gravity and her strength to tip him over her planted foot. Yet he refuses her offer to fight with hammer and shield, to practise the lightning which comes to him without Mjolnir’s control, and which yet feels foreign to his fingers.

Later, as they warm down, he glances sidewise at her and thinks he might begin to understand her fighting style.

The Valkyrior fought in more than two dimensions – their winged mounts said to be a vision of awful beauty in the sky whether they descended onto a battlefield before the fight, or moved among the dead after. Such training has her thinking of space as something to be used – and it has been enhanced by her time on Sakaar. Everything was a resource to be utilised, everything that could be scrounged might be useful, any scrap of information gathered, every person a potential resource.

And in the end, that is how Thor offers his body in the Valkryie’s bed – a bargain, a way to release tension, even an offering of sorts to a goddess he worshipped when he was but a child.

His goddess regards him with surprised eyes that narrow in careful and considered survey of him before she accepts.

–

Sex is not lovemaking – it need not be, at any rate.

And there is nothing tender in the way the Valkyrie’s fingers clench in his hair, the strength in her thighs as she holds his hips in hers, the wild way she eels against him, sharp and slippery and sweaty and sweet.

He tongues the salt off her skin in the aftermath, then smears it across her tongue while her hand cups his chin and she drinks deeply of his mouth.

“A woman who knows what she wants.”

“And a lover willing to give it to her,” she counters, and the glitter of her lashes is sharp as her wit, as her tongue, as the desire still resonant in Thor’s veins.

“I am entirely at your will, Lady.”

She laughs and flips them over, so he lies beneath her spread legs, and the coaxing touch of her hand raises him erect anew. “Are you now?”

He begs and pleads that time – and many, many others – in her bed, letting go of all the responsibilities that bind him when he rises from her sheets, content to be put in her hands.

–

“You’re looking much less tense these days,” says Korg cheerfully. “I reckon you’re feeling better about everything, eh? They used to say that it’d be so good to get off Sakaar – ‘course, nobody really did, not with the Champion beating everyone – and yeah, it felt pretty good when we did make it out, but it was also kind of a letdown if you know what I mean?”

Thor understands. Even in victory against Hela, there was loss. In victory against Ultron, against Malkeith, against Loki...

“Sweet and bitter all together,” the Valkyrie says as they sprawl in his bed.

“Perhaps all existence is stained with it – joy in living, yet pain in it, too.” If it seems an odd place to get philosophical, well, Thor’s in an odd mood tonight. “To come out of a great destruction, yet to suffer the guilt of surviving; to have power beyond imagining and yet to be unable to help those you love in the ways they most need; to be king of untold realms...”

She prompts him when he falls silent. “To be king of untold realms...?”

“To be a king of untold realms, and yet to be, in essence, a refugee.” Thor glances down at her. “Life is a contradiction. Complicated.”

“Mhmm...” The Valkyrie shrugs as she climbs atop him and takes him in hand. “Or maybe you’re thinking too much, my liege. In which case it is my duty to distract you.”

“A duty in which you...ah...quite excel...”

She distracts him with less success than Thor would like. An irony, that.

_You like me, I like you, the sex is incredible. I don’t see the problem unless one of those things changes._

Once, the Prince of Asgard would have been content with sex with a goddess, but the King of Asgard wants more from his Valkyrie, and can neither demand nor command it.


End file.
